Thou parchment roll that hast been smoked upon
Long as around this desk the sorry lamp-light shone;
Much better had I spent my little gear,
Than with this little to sit mouldering here;
Why should a man possess ancestral treasures,
But by possession to enlarge his pleasures?
The thing we use not a dead burden lies,
But what the moment brings the wise man knows to prize.
But what is this? there in the corner; why
Does that flask play the magnet to mine eye?